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Article published In:
Information Visualization
Edited by Marian Dörk and Isabel Meirelles
[Information Design Journal 25:1] 2019
► pp. 110–121

Designing bowel preparation patient instructions to improve colon cancer detection

Evidence-based design criteria for patients’ documents

| Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts | Health Design Network
| University of Alberta (emer.)
| University of Alberta

Medical personnel usually write and design documents that inform physicians or patients about procedures or therapies. Document design, however, requires skills that are not normally applied, resulting in information that is often not used properly. This article describes a project developed by the Alberta Colorectal Cancer Screening Program. The goal was to help patients better prepare for their colonoscopies. The process started with an analysis of the existing documents, and the development of performance specifications based on the literature on legibility, reading comprehension, memorization and use of information, plain language, visual perception, page layout, and image use. The project included an iterative process of prototyping and testing that resulted in 23 design criteria. Each iteration was tested with users to ensure ease of use, completeness of information, and accuracy and clarity to facilitate adoption. The project helped reduce practice variation regarding bowel preparation in the province of Alberta, Canada. This project illustrates how information design can help healthcare organizations provide patient-centred care. Information design helps patients engage in their own caring process, by providing information that people can use, understand and apply. After 15 months of use, the document has been downloaded more than 48,000 times, suggesting a good physician reception.

Keywords: evidence, design, testing, iterating, human-centered
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: The medical and the design problem
    • 1.1The medical problem to be reduced
    • 1.2The problem of developing the bowel prep information tools
      • 1.2.1The users and the context in which the document is used
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Data analysis
      • 2.1.1Thinking aloud protocols
      • 2.1.2Face-to-face interviews
  • 3.Some of the design criteria developed based on scientific evidence
    • 3.1Segmenting the information
    • 3.2The notion of prospect
    • 3.3Cognitive load: Number of units of information
    • 3.4Type size and style to support legibility
    • 3.5Type style
    • 3.6Text structure and navigation to improve readability
    • 3.7The visual organization of a document
    • 3.8Text organizers
  • 4.Findings
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 16 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.25.1.09noe
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